The winter Games in Milano Cortina will soon begin, and much of what will carry athletes, spectators, and communities through the moment has already been built. Behind that effort is SIMICO S.p.A., the government-owned organization responsible for delivering one of Italy’s most ambitious public infrastructure programs in decades. Across northern Italy, SIMICO has led nearly 100 infrastructure and sports-related projects, representing €3.4 billion in public investment, from transportation networks to essential public works, each delivered against fixed deadlines, strict public oversight, and national expectations.
From the start, SIMICO understood that delivering a program of this scale, with dozens of projects moving in parallel across multiple regions, would take more than strong engineering. It would require a new approach to coordination, governance, and the way information moves across every project. “We were asked to be visionaries, to anticipate the future and to turn every project into a concrete example of technological and organizational progress,” says Eng. Lucia Samorani, technical director at SIMICO.
That mindset shaped a connected approach to delivery, one built to support the winter Games in 2026 and to leave lasting value for the communities these projects will serve long after the Games are over.
Running dozens of major projects at the same time, many with overlapping timelines and shared stakeholders, meant SIMICO needed a better way to keep everyone aligned, from designers and engineers to partners and decision-makers. The team built its digital governance around Autodesk Construction Cloud, now part of Autodesk Forma, which serves as the central platform for coordinating design, documentation, and delivery, creating a shared environment where project teams, partners, and stakeholders could work from the same information and collaborate in real time.
Cortina Olympic Jump BIM Infrastructure on Autodesk Viewer. Courtesy of SIMICO – Società Infrastrutture Milano Cortina 2020-2026 S.p.A.
At the center of that environment is Autodesk Docs, which SIMICO uses as its common data environment to manage documentation, approvals, and oversight across projects. “Autodesk Docs ensures that everyone is always working on the latest version of each document,” explains Eng. Francesco Cappilli, head of digital governance at SIMICO. “The adoption of Autodesk Docs has truly saved us valuable time, in some cases, days or even weeks on certain delivery processes, particularly for documentation and digital models.”
For design coordination, SIMICO relies on BIM Collaborate Pro to bring together models from multiple disciplines in the cloud. This allows teams to spot potential clashes earlier, track changes more clearly, and reduce rework before issues reach the construction site. This has resulted in smoother coordination, earlier issue resolution, and greater confidence in staying on schedule, even as multiple projects advanced simultaneously under fixed deadlines.
That same connection had to work on site, too. With crews spread across multiple locations, SIMICO needed a way to make sure the people in the field were always working from the same information as the teams in the office. Using Autodesk Build, construction teams could check the latest drawings and models, flag issues, respond to RFIs, and report progress directly from the site, even when they are offline.
“The mobile app has been a real game changer,” says Marco Isernia, BIM manager at SIMICO. “The office and the field now work with the same information.”
While delivery has been the immediate focus, SIMICO has also been thinking about what happens next. Using Autodesk Tandem, the team is creating digital twins that carry critical information from design and construction into operations, ensuring that knowledge from a multi-billion Euro public program is not lost once projects are handed over. This will support long-term maintenance, performance monitoring, and more sustainable asset management long after the Games are over.
“Our responsibility does not end with construction,” Samorani notes. “It must also extend to the effective and sustainable management of these works.”
Cortina Sliding Centre Screen in Autodesk Tandem Courtesy of SIMICO – Società Infrastrutture Milano Cortina 2020-2026 S.p.A.
As the winter Games take off, SIMICO’s work offers a clear example of how public infrastructure programs can be delivered at scale when ambition is matched with strong coordination and a shared digital foundation. Managing a program of this size and complexity takes speed, transparency, and trust across teams, along with a clear plan for what happens after the spotlight moves on.
For Autodesk, working alongside SIMICO on a program like this reinforces why we do this work. When public agencies have better ways to connect people, data, and decisions, they gain the time and confidence to focus on outcomes that matter. The result is infrastructure that is built to last and designed to support the community for decades to come.